In a world of subjective experience, where our life stories craft our perceptions of the world, no two people can be the same. Not only are we genetically unique out of billions, but our individual backgrounds are also as varied as the clouds in the sky. This makes for unfathomable variations within our global community. Our cultures can help define who we are, the places we live, the people we live with, and the people we admire all help guide us into our true selves. Our internal framework of virtue, right from wrong, and what is proper, is crafted in stages and branches off into all aspects of our personality. Like a spider’s web, the whole network of ideas and associated feelings vibrates when one line is plucked. This can create problems when discussing or debating complex or emotionally charged ideas.  
 
Dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that happens when two conflicting subjective truths fail to resonate. If someone plays the wrong note in a song, you can hear it immediately. It can ruin the experience for that moment, and if they keep doing it, the entire song can be crucified live on stage. This is because chords and notes in music resonate through harmony. Wrong notes do not resonate with harmony because they don’t fit the pattern. The opposite of resonance, in music, is also called dissonance. It is technically the same principle but in two different arenas. Dissonance doesn’t just happen in music. 
 
Perhaps this isn’t a concert. Maybe, this time the wrong note is an idea in a conversation or even a debate. If we are being called on to respond and add to the topic, our emotions can add extra colour to our reaction. These wrong notes or dissonant ideas can become pressure variations in swelling clouds. If they get too intermingled, the natural result might be thunder and lightning. This can also happen in the mind, when one rhetoric and narrative create a dissonance rather than a resonance.  
 
Depending on the feelings that surround the exchange, all manner of conflicting issues may arise. If the opinion of the other isn’t so relevant to you, you may regret their personality mismatch and think no more of it. If you love them, or respect them, if their view makes you look like you’re guilty, or some other charged situation with a much larger outcome, you might feel more passionately about asserting your rhetoric and your narrative. This is especially true if your version is concrete and rooted in your own experience, rather than read about or learned second-hand. 
 
Sometimes there is no way around the dissonance, and walking away is not a favourable option. This can be for many reasons, emotional or practical. The most difficult dissonance to resolve is the kind that strikes at our sense of right and wrong. Most of our virtues trace back to this principle, with the why and how carried to us through examples and stories we’ve learned. Sometimes our body reacts before our mind catches up. We feel something is wrong, even if we can’t yet name it. Subconsciously, we are responding to a deeper sense of wisdom. This can be an incredibly powerful motivator, and when it aligns with clear thoughts we can describe and defend, it’s like a river breaking free from a dam. 
 
When the perspective before us feels alien, or counter to what we know, and we care deeply about our truth and those who need to hear it, emotions can rise to critical levels. We can become desperate, even panicked, and as we see in our streets and across social media, people get angry. A radically different perspective can feel like an assault on the core of who we are. If our virtues are not respected or even recognised because of a conflicting narrative, it can feel undermining, disrespectful, a direct scratch on our self‑esteem. It is no crime to have a fragile self‑esteem. But such moments can make us feel slighted and almost entitled to respond with equal force or with something twice as fierce, to ensure the wound is not struck again. 
 
What if the situation isn’t about you and another person, but about a community, a country, or a wider issue dominating the social conversation? What if it’s not just you who feels the dissonance, but a large group like a demographic, or a coalition of people sharing the same view across the broader landscape? This is when dissonance can spread into public rage: difficult to control, hard to resolve peacefully, and often leading to a loss of trust and a widening gap in the scales of justice. It manifests in posters, songs, newspaper articles, and graffiti, culminating in a social musical score with aligned notes and orchestrations of rhetoric that harmonise with brewing grievances. If left to grow, and the passion is ignored, protests may break out. Emotional calls to action can escalate, sometimes tipping into harmful riots and clashes between well‑meaning citizens caught in something beyond their control, and the authorities tasked with restoring order. 
 
Anger is a natural response, and when we use nature to our benefit, we can become empowered by what it has to offer. How can we use something as hot and dangerous as anger to our benefit? It boils down to focus, containment, and deliberate action. 
 
Focus means the anger must be kept clean — not a far‑reaching explosion that disrupts whatever happens to be in the way, not a public outburst designed to create a scene, but a clear knowing of what you want to change and why. Containment means the anger is not allowed to leak into other areas; your passion and drive are not excuses to sour your mood, lash out, or treat others with unearned hostility. Containment reinforces focus, ensuring your moral energy stays in check and you keep the high ground. 
 
Deliberate action is the end result of this discipline. The heat of your anger can be like the fires in a forge. Imagine molten steel pouring from your furnace, ready to build the bridge you need to meet others halfway. You can use the energy of outrage to create something that paves a road forward, allowing you to walk away without losing your peace. You might even forge a new system that makes space for both perspectives to thrive side by side. 
 
The vast tapestry of life will always offer up unpractised musicians and clumsy masons. Variation is the natural world’s great gift, the force that allows life to evolve, transcend its prototype, and become something more. When we take a positive approach to our dissonance, and feed the fires of productivity, creativity, and invention, our journey shifts from destructive to future‑building. The best way to shape the future is to create it yourself. We cannot do everything, but the small universe beneath our feet is ours to tend. So, take it, build your mosaics from right and wrong, tested virtues, and the truths you hold dear. Be the builder, the inventor, the one who forges a path through anger and dissonance until two opposing ideas can stand together on common ground, sharing the same horizon.  
 
Do you want to gain a deeper understanding of human behaviour, emotion, and how to best manage these thing with yourself and others? Take some power back with this selection of top courses with free access.
 
 

It’s a common-sense rule of thumb that we seem to accept without much thought. Creativity and madness go hand in hand. But is this true? How do we know? And is it right to make such broad statements about people we have never met? A lot of work has gone into finding these answers, and although we may never completely understand how the brain works in relation to personality, we can study behaviour and mental processes with different types of scientific inquiry. This means refusing to accept the assumptions in favour of hard evidence. In something as intangible as the personality, finding the root of anything may be like draining the ocean with a sieve.  
 
We can make a lot of individual observations and then build a larger picture from the jigsaw of information we find. Obviously, we cannot fully understand a thing until we have the whole picture, and this may never be reached, so scientific inquiry must reach into logical hypothesis to complete the process. New information may disrupt these logical assumptions over time so it’s always vital to make the facts and the hypothesis separate, so people know what to look at and what to use. Science is defined by its repeatable nature and with all mental health cases everyone is a unique individual. This poses another problem. Like with quantum mechanics, the mind can be seen as something that expresses potentials rather than known quantities. Perhaps this is because of the quantum effects of brain function or maybe it’s a convergent evolution of principles, independent of quantum mechanics.  
 
As human beings we have tastes and passions. When it comes to creative art such as painting or literature, the desire is usually to find something to our taste and to invigorate our passions. We also tend to prefer art that has a deep emotional connection that we can become a part of in the experience. We like to be moved in some way so shown something so interesting and fascinating that it really makes us think. Suffering is something that is particularly interesting in all our media. In problem solving we need to know how the suffering is affecting people, in drama we don’t get a story without dilemma and personal risk, in art we want to see through the eyes of someone else and know their intimate thoughts. We also have a morbid fascination for suffering, we enjoy learning about horrible things that have happened in the past and in the modern day.  
 
For someone who experiences a lot of mental suffering, and has the ability to create from this resource, their work has a potential to be sought after. They can direct it in any setting, and provided they can find a use for their scope of imagination and experience, they can find a purpose and a meaning in life by expressing their mind. Turning a debilitating condition into something of value is highly important for a lot of people. Put it in the right packaging and suffering can be highly lucrative. This doesn’t mean that we should make suffering for people for entertainment, it means that those with the right experience sometimes get the right job.  
 
Mania on the other hand is not necessarily about suffering, and yet is completely debilitating for the sufferer. It consists of the person having incontrollable energy levels, racing thoughts, lots of adrenaline, and an out-of-control inner dialogue. In schizophrenia and psychosis, the inner dialogue can become highly intrusive, devoid of reason, and paranoid. This can not only cause huge distress to the sufferer but can be difficult for others to manage. In some cases, when the mania is linked to narcissism or sociopathy, the sufferer can become dangerous. This is because they simply do not have the necessary brain function to stop them from carrying out their unhinged motivations.  
 
In people who suffer with mania, the creativity is often associated with the up phrase of their condition. When the mind is alive and the energy levels are high, the connection between the subconscious and the conscious is at its strongest. The individual is able to navigate these chaotic mental inferences and use them to create imaginative and intelligent ideas. Mania is often linked to symptoms such as reckless abandon and persistent impulses. This combined with the strong connection to the subconscious can result in a huge body of work that receives little attention once it’s been put down. A stream of consciousness style of creation can work well for some, provided they are able to provide enough clarity. For most of us, we have to go through things and make them sound verbally rational. The spontaneous works and ideas that manic people produce are often incredibly vivid and are filled with expressions of urgency. They tend to be striking at first but can lack emotional depth, again, the limited amount of thinking through can be an issue.  
 
In the way that creativity and mental illness are casually linked, the same can be said for creativity and intelligence. We know that it is the people with verbal and literal intelligence who are the most likely to develop some kind of mood disorder. Technically minded people seem to have a greater capacity to manage their thoughts and emotions in ways that prevent serious illness. This points to the fact that those who do suffer with mental health problems to varying degrees are more likely to have higher verbal intelligence overall. This gives them the ability to translate their raw emotion and sensation into some kind of reasonable description that others can relate to. This may be through metaphor of can be a more direct approach. Finding the words is the key. Something else we know about people with both depressive and manic disorders is that they have a propensity to daydream. The distraction offered by unwanted thoughts and feelings can be enough to take the attention away from the present moment and into an inner environment.  
 
It has been shown that mental health problems do run in families and the causes are at least partially genetic. This means that the brain itself holds many answers as to the issue and not the choices and personality of the individual. At the same time, people with neurological disorders can often be found to have creative members of the family. The act of being creative is often a release and a cure for any unwanted mental states and it could be that the two are linked but expressing themselves differently.  
 
When all of this is said, it is vital to appreciate that having a mental health condition is never somehow a blessing. It may be that it is linked to creativity, but there are plenty of creative people who are not mentally unwell. In fact, most are not. And the same can be said for mentally unwell people, they’re not all creative. Again, most are not. What can be said is a higher proportion than normal can be found in both groups, to the extent that it deserves further study. Artists and writers are also statistically more likely to die by suicide or through the actions of mania. They are more likely to struggle with addiction and have trouble holding down work and family units. It’s not a beautiful path to be romanticised, however creativity might be a great way to make the most of one’s issues in a way that hurts no-one and has the potential to help or at least inspire someone else.  

Mental health problems affect 1 in 4 of us at some point in our lives, according to the World Health Organisation. If you want to be able to be a source of empowerment and wellness for those around you or even for yourself, then here is a course in understanding Depression, Anxiety, and CBT, from Reading University. Free and paid options available. ​

Not all of us are creative people, and some of us are a lot more creative than others. It’s also known that you can’t teach creativity to people who are not inclined to be creative. It’s akin to asking a goldfish to climb a tree. It’s just not going to be able to do it, no matter how many times you explain it. Understanding the theory is one thing but putting it into practice requires a particular type of mind that enables this ability. So, what is going on in the brain that means one person can think creatively and another person cannot? And why are some people so creative that asking them to do things that require none is like a prison for them? What do we know? 
 
Unfortunately, most of the research done on the brain is instigated because of illness. This is because curing people is a lot more important than finding out how healthy people do what they do. With a subject like neurobiology, the expertise and funding are limited. It’s understandable that priorities mean the sick get the first attention. However, we also know that creative people often have mental health problems. This means it has coincided that creative people have been studied in detail because of their illness. Not all creative people get ill, so we can’t say that we know the entire story, but both creativity and mental illness come from the same system, so we know they are linked in some way. How close the link is will be the basis of further study.  
 
Why do creative people have a higher predetermination for mental illness? It’s more likely for them, so there must be something in the brain that makes the path to problematic thinking more viable. Why do non-creative people tend to not struggle so much with mental health? What is protecting them from the turmoil of an out-of-control mental state? The clear difference between sane and non-sane thought can put a barrier between individuals and when a person is unable to empathise with the unexplainable thoughts, it can be hard to help someone in this state. With compassion and tolerance, we can work together and find the right way to move forward. Accepting what they say as true for them and what they experience as a valid one can mean making tough choices about what a person is capable of or not. Only with acceptance and compassion can we find solutions that help people to be their best self in a setting prepared to handle their illness.  
 
But what about people who are not mentally unwell but are creative? What do they do that is analogous to madness and mood disorders? The key is in the ability to perceive things in new ways. The term ‘thinking outside the box’ is put into its best use when talking about creativity. By seeing pathways to ideas and strategies from the available resources that have not yet been identified, we are applying our creative mind. In a mood disorder or a madness, the novel ideas are wrong. In a creative person, they are right. Being able to distinguish between the two is the fundamental difference between creativity and madness. Creative people might have crazy ideas, usually called blue sky thinking, but they know when it needs work. They also have the usual mental blocks that prevent harmful and hurtful thought. It is when these subconscious safeguarding systems go wrong that the mind slips from creativity to insanity. That’s where the acceptance becomes important, denying it will only put a spanner in the works. 
 
It’s not only art where creativity is integral to the work involved. Art is often an expression of pure creativity with only a formal veneer of technique and method to make it viable for one style or another. Academic subjects also require creativity. Every invention, new idea, technique, personal plan, and more requires a set of mental processes that are completely unique. When a mathematician solves a complex formula or writes down a new one, they are using their creative brain to find the result. You need to apply the sense of process and trial and error with associated ideas based on intuition. That’s how creative ideas are nurtured.  
 
What motivates creative people? Why are they prepared to go into new realms of thought when there is so much out there already? Surely, it’s a lot of effort and with people thinking you might be mad, is it worth it? It does seem that creative people have a sense of social magnanimity. A selfless desire to make things better one way or another is what separates a creative person from say a poser or a mad person. When you care about society and other people as individuals and are motivated to assist with creative ideas, even if they don’t work, you carry an altruistic sense of service that some of us simply don’t have. By nurturing this sense of service by self-managing your ventures and enterprises, you can find sustainable and viable ways to apply your creative mind.  
 
Another motivation for creativity is as a cure for a sad mood. Sometimes if we are unhappy or emotional in uncomfortable ways then we choose creative methods to help. Painting, writing, making sculpture, or planning a brilliant idea might be just the ticket to getting out of one frame of mind and into another. Because creative people are more likely to have problems with low mood, it’s often the case that the desire to create is both motivated by a self-actualisation and a selfless sense of purpose. This duality can be hard to manage when a lot of what creative people do is rejected and mocked by the undiscerning public. It’s only when something becomes successful and well-known that most people begin to pay attention. Reaching the people that matter means taking risks and trusting your instincts of association.  
 
People who choose creativity as a lifestyle either in a job or as a serious hobby are often more tolerant to risk factors. To do something novel and unvalidated by trusted authority is a brave demonstration of individual merit. Putting your faith in the opinion of untrained and unprepared minds means putting your faith in your own idea. If it fails it can be a real blow, especially if it’s your livelihood on the line. To people who are highly creative, this doesn’t matter as much. Some of us would rather sit quietly and follow instructions to get everything as it ought to be. The idea of failure or major mistakes on their record is too much. To be able to bypass this sense of anticipated dread creative people can disassociate with the temporary opinions and bubbles of emotion that follow them. Look at politicians, they have practically half their home nation undermining their every move. Do they let it stop them? They just get on with the job. Having a blind spot for the antisocial effects of poor opinion is a skill that requires confidence in your own ability to make good judgements. 
 
The downside to the creative mindset is that because of the poor opinions of others and the judgements of their ideas being associated with their character, many people find it difficult to tolerate and accept them. As soon as a person is known for doing something that is not yet validated by social consensus, a lot of people are not prepared to accept or identify with those who create them. This leads to isolation and social exclusion, which can be a cruel and lonely place to find yourself in. When you make it as a creative person, and you have proven yourself with a viable and sustainable idea, some people still find it difficult to accept because of wariness. Because they can’t understand the journey to where they are, they imagine boundaries and fiery swords that make a difference. They don’t exist.  
 
What do we know about the difference between creative people and non-creative people when carrying out mental tasks? The brain has been studied in various ways with different tasks being conducted with scanners. This gives a physical representation of the biomechanical process that represents the individual’s thoughts. When people think creatively, the mind either has ordered thinking or chaotic thinking. Those of us who can apply ordered thought when applying novel and juxtapositioned ideas are more likely to find the solution from the given information. Those of us who think chaotically when assessing the information are less likely to find creative solutions. This is something that can’t often be helped, as the subconscious mind is the governor of this method. Because we are not conscious of this process, we have no direct control over it.  
 
In fact, creative mental processing has been shown to be genetic in origin. In the same way that mood disorders and sanity disorders can run in families, the traits that lead to creative thinking can also be traced in this way. The subconscious mind is the source of all our ideas, and it is in our conscious processing that we sift through the information and find the correct thought or response. Usually, the subconscious offers something we understand and know from experience.  Creative people can take abstract associations and imaginative uses for things that they have already learned. This is the boundary that gets broken for something to be new. The application of something known to something else known but so far unconnected is how inventions begin. For our subconscious mind to offer these strange connections, it must be able to communicate from the non-linear side of its process and have a conscious non-linear process that can meet it.  
 
To be able to directly link the conscious with the subconscious mind, the conscious mind needs to be relatively quiet. In the rest state, the subconscious mind is given the energy it needs to begin administrating the information it has received and linking it to everything it already knows. This happens all at once with no sense of hierarchy. That means the non-linear amalgam of processing can be confusing to the stable and linear process. This is why some people find it chaotic and hard to work with. To be able to remain stable in conscious processing and accept the subconscious prompts at a metered rate, the creative mind can access this chaotic and inspirational resource.  
 
This means the creative process can’t just take place automatically. The mind must be fully stocked with the resources it needs to build something new. Like playing Minecraft, you can’t craft until you have mined. This means that we must learn about the things we want to create for.  Even a painter must learn about their technique and style, finger painting included. To make something of value that appeals to the people it is designed for, we must learn a lot of skills and gain a lot of experience in the field before we can begin. It is in the creative combination of every skill we have learned and every association we have gathered that we can plot unique and fitting lines between them that leave people feeling rewarded and not confused.  
 
Rise above: If Psychology is something you're interested in, why not try out this online course from Monash University​. Free and paid options available.

Emotions are like colours, they all have names and they can be nicely blended into one another like a spectrum. Our feelings emerge from the various experiences we think of and encounter, and when a phrase accompanies the feeling, it’s labelled as an emotion. There are plenty of stock phrases that people use to convey how they feel, and at the same time, these phrases can conjure the feeling from its hiding place when we were not conscious of it. Depressive thoughts carry depressive feelings, grateful thoughts carry grateful feelings. These emotions can be challenged, accepted, rewritten, mocked, and so on, depending on how you feel best to deal with it. We each have our own agenda, however most of us want to get on and be content with our daily activities. This means we need to take control of the various inputs and only listen to the ones that benefit us.
 
Colour theory and emotional intelligence are very similar. In a study by Berlin and Kay during 1969, a series of observations were made in regard to language and colour across indigenous peoples. In the enlightened world, in which global information is easily accessed, the roots of our cultures are ever increasingly diluted. However in indigenous cultures, the influence of modern thought is much less pervasive. It is therefore easier to determine factors such as language and colour relationships. It was found that when cultures describe colour, every one had at least two colours. These were light and dark. Other cultures, with a more diverse linguistic, could talk about four colours. It was only after this barrier had been reached that a more diverse spectrum of colour description became available. Our names for colour have given our brains the tools it needs to distinguish between them, and for other cultures without these names, the distinguishment is less vivid. They appear as shades of one or the other.
 
With our art, we can use this principle to further the reach of our emotional intelligence. A good description of a perspective, a situation, and the true-to-life feelings that arise from it can help people to learn how to empathise with those they are not familiar with. We possibly cannot imagine what it is like for a tribesperson who didn’t get their new lip piercing because of a wrong move in the dance, but for this imaginary person it might be the end of their dream. How do we know? The story has to be genuine and realistic, it has to put the reader into the shoes of the stranger and give them second sight. Art can do this with pictures too, a vivid picture can bring about all kinds of genuine sensations we’d not otherwise have felt. Words, however, have the ability to pin-point and stick around as recordings in the mind, whereas an image reverberates as a symbol, available to a wider range of analogues.
 
In a world that thrives on division and misunderstanding, the projection of evil onto rational points of view, and the closing off of logic according to the colour of the badge, we can all learn something from the art that speaks louder than the intolerant. Half of the voting populous are not lunatics and they are not somehow twisted or scheming. They’re just different and they see things differently. We need to be able to open the eyes of those around us with our art in order to tell the truth without being ugly and repulsive. Preaching to the choir will not do, when educating your antithesis you must respect their position before you can expect them to respect your own. 

Recommended reading: Emotional Intelligence 2.0: A Practical Guide to Master Your Emotions. Stop Overthinking and Discover the Secrets to Increase Your Mental Toughness, Self Discipline and Leadership Abilities
​

Beginnings Of Creativity
 
We all struggle with trying new things, we need a lot of practice and an innate understanding that only time and experience can attain. Some of us are bursting with ideas, some good, some bad, and some we just must go out and try. If we’re doing something for the simple pleasure of doing it then that’s fine, enjoy yourself and be safe. If, on the other hand, you want to make some kind of positive effect either in other’s lives, in your own, or even both, then you’ll need to get good. So, before you can concrete yourself as part of the scenery with your ideas and input, you’ll need to take yourself to the highest league you can. It’s important to take lessons and listen to experts so that you can learn to think about what you’re doing in ways that have been shown to work. When we’re unaware of issues, flaws, aesthetic boundaries, and so on, we can’t see when we break them. Rules are made to be broken from time to time however you need to do it in a way that elevates the value rather than diminishes it. Intuitive understanding will only get us so far, at some point we must learn the ropes, so we know which ones to pull.
 
Discipline And Motivation
 
Motivation is the natural result of our interests and passions. When we care about something and enjoy thinking about something, we can result in a strong motivation to pursue the activity. A rewarding sense of achievement will arise after hard work and experimentation which serves to bolster the drive even more. Of course, there will be set-backs, failure, misunderstandings, and rejections, it might sometimes feel that despite your thousands of hours, you’re still not hitting the target. It is in these times that discipline comes into play. To be disciplined, we need to be able to manage our emotions. There will come a time when you don’t feel like doing the work you need to do.
 
Ask yourself, am I tired, am I hungry, am I upset at something, is there something more important I should be doing? If you can’t think of a rational reason and alternative activity including rest, then discipline must become your tool. Rather than forcing yourself to do something like a master and slave, a persuasion perspective will help a lot more. Remind yourself of all the things that make it worthwhile, go over your goals, look to your heroes and your inspirations, the people you admire, what would they say? Embody the bigger person and do what you know is necessary for your progress. Maybe tell a story about how the evil wizard is catching up with their plan and you need to finish the incantations, make it exciting, interesting, and fun. Just don’t quit or get lazy, that’s how we fail.
 
Making Sense Of Invention
 
Our minds are networks, we build thoughts based on concepts that reflect into one another perpetually. It’s impossible to define a word without defining the words it’s defined by and so on until all we are left with is words we can’t define unless we know. This knowing comes from the continual similar use and appropriate implementation of the word in context, so we become aware of its function. We learn the word once and then don’t need to know what it actually means in a verbal sense, we intuitively know via pictures, feelings, and relationship directions that our minds naturally build. A new word can be baffling to us until we know what it means and how to use it. Often the word need to sound appropriate for its use. In the odd circumstance when we adopt a foreign word for something, it’s only when we know what it originally meant that it makes appropriate sense to us. The same can be said for new ideas, new concepts, and new creative output. Things need to fit into place for them to be appropriate for the society it is released into. How can we build these mental maps in person to help with our creativity? We need to apply synectics. Synectics is the study of a creative process by experts with a function to improve, progress, or otherwise increase value.
 
It begins with the use of relevant analogies. Creativity is applying unlike things to each other in ways that result in like and positive things. To be able to determine a purpose and a function for a creative output, there must be a natural neural path for society to think about the creation. We need to know what to do with something, why we would do it, and it has to be a rewarding or at least easy experience to carry out. Analogies help us to see things from unique perspectives that may not directly apply to the original situation but result in relevant and like-for-like concepts that apply across boundaries. Solving problems often requires unique or unusual perspectives and analogies help us to determine what these can be.
 
The transposition of one concept into another one can help us to see things from a new perspective and understand where improvements or alterations can have genuine effects. Learning more about the attributes of the situation by applying new thinking tools via useful analogies and metaphors can empower everyone involved to make better choices about what to do next. Personal analogies help us to see something from a perspective we may not have noticed, putting ourselves in the place of something or someone with a unique advantage or responsibility. Direct analogies are about aligning the genuine experience or problem with something from life that is similar and perhaps holds unique viewpoints on the problem. Fantastical and metaphorical analogies tell stories about the problem in ways that break the conventional rules the problem is facing. This helps us to see things in a way that negates cultural boundaries and learned perspectives in favour of what is possible. Creation of value can be a purely mental process. However, when designing something more than the next step, there needs to be a lot of considered and applied processing from the creator in order to bring about the expected and earned outcome. 
​

The Power Of Criticism
 
When we’ve worked hard for something the last thing we want to hear is that it’s not good enough, doesn’t warrant attention, and no one wants to buy it. It is a disillusionment for those with high aspirations and the confidence to get them. Listening to critics is important when we are beginners because the everyday public can be a great judge of our material. When we become experts or well-experienced at something, often it our peers that we turn to for criticism. It’s important to learn how to do things in the right way and in ways that the everyday public can appreciate. Otherwise, we’ll create something for nothing. It probably won’t do what it is supposed to in the best way, and it won’t be easily adopted by those it is meant for. We can be our harshest critic at times, but the act of confidence and a good positive attitude does require us to silence this voice. The voices of others can’t be silenced so easily, the best way to do that is to satisfy them. We must be the ultimate judge of whether they should be listened to. Advice about advice about advice will only get us in a knot. That’s where our own inner critic must come into play.
 
When we are free to create adlib without the fear of social judgement or professional criticism then we might have plenty of ideas. We may flow with inspiration and analogies that create a wide and diverse picture of what we’re thinking about. This works well for the initial phase, but when we come to decide what is going to work and what people are going to like, we have to begin to listen to the judges. The better the quality of experience we have results in a more intuitive understanding of the public mood and the peer standard. This means that the more we do, the more we listen, the more we make up our own minds, the better our work will be.
 
A process of creation with delayed criticism as a cycle is the most profitable approach when choosing ideas and processes that will fit your original purpose and the state of society. Being able to manage our emotional state during the cutting down of ideas by not being attached to dead wood and by remembering to water the flourishing garden that we’re not use to having means having a grasp on your subconscious patterns and motivations that belong in the past.
 
Divergent Evolution Of Good Ideas
 
Life on Earth has evolved into a plethora of diverse and fascinating creatures, plants, and cellular organisms. Everything is based on a fundamental principle of self-replicating contained energy manipulation chemistry. It’s been theorised that if everything needed was put together and energy applied that to get a functioning lifeform, you’d possibly need a thousand universes each filled with the right stuff to have a chance. Others say that it’s perfectly normal to have life when conditions are right because the universe itself has a body of laws that promotes its genesis. However it began, what it resulted in has been incredible. The types of creatures that have walked the Earth have changed over time, from the fossil record we have learned about the evolution of fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, and plants. Although various species and unique animals have disappeared, the ideas behind their biology have perpetuated throughout the ages. Even diverse species can be traced back with similar traits that are shared across families. We share a lot with fish, for example. It’s just the various sizes of things and the method of taking in air that are different. The bones, the cells, the pigments, the digestive system, the respiration chemistry, it’s practically identical. A good idea is a good idea so there is every good reason to continue these traits into our advanced evolutionary state.
 
Our inventiveness and creativity follow rules in a way that is very similar to the evolution of complex life. A good idea works across frameworks. When we create something, it is usually relatable to something else. This could be simple, as in a painting, relatable to all other paintings, regardless of style or quality. A great painting may be relatable to a master or two, or simply aesthetically brilliant enough to relate to something else entirely that also is rewarding to perceive. Evolution is the result of applied trial and error over time. Every trial that isn’t an error is given the chance to perpetuate. If it is lucky enough to do so, the trait will become more widespread as its self-replicating chemistry maintains the new information. We can apply this principle to our ideas in an evolutionary fast-forward by either imagining our ideas in practice to see obvious flaws or putting them into genuine practice to see less obvious ones. We can adapt the flawed elements by reducing, reusing, and reinventing until we end up with something aesthetically appealing, functional, and deserving of other people’s time.
 
The Grand Plan
 
Unless you have billions of years and a lot of luck from no-where in particular, we need to have a plan. A loose set of ideas that produce a virtual end result you can be happy with. The planning stage requires your expertise, your understood criticism, your desires and motivations, and the whims of the society the creativity is for. You need to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you’re going to progress in real-time. Planning is the creation of a flow chart of instructions that you can use as a guideline and a memory aid to ensure you reach your goal. The preparation is in the creation of models and practicing techniques until you can commit to something permanent. A lot of what we create these days is not permanent, we can edit, alter, change, discontinue, and so on. There are some things that break free from this cycle of renewal and trend to become static and perennial items transcending the seasons. To become like this, we need to be able to stay the same indefinitely. So planning is ultimately essential to ensure we can become a contender for this prestige marketing position.
 
Standing out and becoming a valuable item on the social scene as an invention requires an up-to-date understanding of the scene. A realistic approach will appreciate the cutting-edge design and techniques that people employ to do what you want to do for yourself. Of course, we can’t always go out and buy the best stuff or learn from the best places, but we can always make the most of where we are and utilise what is available to the best of our ability. A thousand free articles and videos can probably cover the same information as an expensive course, it’s just you have to go out and find them for yourself and know what to ignore. There are a lot of novices preaching authority out there.
 
The Novice Genius
 
Why is it that we see beginner’s luck? How does a person with no prior experience waltz in and achieve something that others have spent hours trying to achieve? This sort of thing happens all the time when we look deep into social situations. It’s because a fresh perspective is often needed to see a truly creative solution. When we become experts and experienced, we learn techniques, patterns of behaviour, and polite routines that ensure everything works well. Once we become locked into our methods, we can sometimes fail to see problems or solutions others can.
 
If we’re used to the issue and don’t consider it to be one or if the state-of-the-art equipment no longer requires as much attention and care in certain areas but more in others, we might be unable to see the solution straight away. A newcomer might be much more inclined to intuitively fix the problem by trying to use the invention in a way that suits them. They might suggest an alteration or ask why something is there when it is redundant. This means that we shouldn’t discount a novice or a layperson who might have something to say. It’s important to get as many perspectives as we can and if someone is given the chance to prove their point to you, it doesn’t matter who they are. Their input had value regardless of their background.
 
On a personal level, it can also mean that your original idea is sound even if you didn’t have the expertise to carry it out properly. Sometimes the reason we fail is because we didn’t foresee the issues at play, and we didn’t properly predict how others would behave in your given situation. Being able to work through these pitfalls requires the learning and the experience that makes the process more intuitive. It doesn’t mean we should give up on our dreams or dismiss our ideas as naïve fantasies. If the value was there from the start, then the learning and training will only serve to solidify the concept and help it to be more effective.
 
So don’t be afraid to start something if you haven’t already and if you are passionate about it, you’ll take it far. Make sure you think about the process and the details of the outcome as part of a wider social network, and it will no-doubt apply to people in ways you couldn’t have foreseen. We’re all a bit creative, especially when we’re not trying to be. 
​